I was having my own moments of self awareness through my therapy appointments as well. Dealing with my past, and all that I did that was not conducive to a good marriage. I’m not going to bother and try and justify my sins here. They are what they are, and I can’t change the past. Out of sixteen years of marriage to the kids’ father, I was faithful a whopping 5 out of them. We never put a marriage together, we were roommates and co-parents at best. Although the now X was a decent and God fearing man, who did not drink or beat me, and was a good provider, there just wasn’t anything there to “get close to.”

I’m sure some may wonder why I married him then. Well to be brutally honest, I had a small baby, had just come out of an abusive marriage, and was looking for a father for my son. The X was a Christian, and stable, and I believed through a lot of my Christian background, that love is a choice, we could chose who we decide to love, and I was going to chose him. At 28 years of age, the X was a virgin and intended to stay that way until his wedding night. So a lot of what I felt was missing in our relationship, I assumed would be there after our wedding night. Which transpired almost exactly 6 months from the day we met. (Not something I recommend btw)

During the next 16 years of marriage I would have four affairs that lasted years each. They were decent men who I felt connected to in ways I never managed to feel with my husband. Two of those men were married with children. I wasn’t out to break up their marriages, and both of them knew that. I was just looking for some intimacy that was so greatly lacking in my own marriage, and made the loneliness of being married to him more bearable. Fucked up justifications? No doubt.

My conscious throughout the years would almost drive me insane. I drank so heavily that I would have black-outs. During one affair, I went through a cocaine phase that lasted approximately two years. I didn’t like who I had become but believed I wasn’t capable of changing it. The five years of faithfulness was sparked by a spiritual experience that helped me give up cocaine and have my two beautiful children. I believed God could fill the needs that my husband was incapable of meeting, and I just needed to pray more and let Him fill those needs. I did affirmations, where if I said I loved this man enough, it would make it so.

By baby number three, the husband’s distance and indifference became blatant. He believed now that he had strapped me with three kids, there would be no way I would ever leave him. I remember warning him, that I would get counseling and become stronger, and one day I would leave. I met my fourth lover two years after Riley was born. It would see me hopping flights to Palm Springs every few months, to go on what even my husband had dubbed Teri’s Retreats. Yes he was aware of the affairs, and chose to look the other way, to keep his world in tact.

When we moved to Arizona, it was with the understanding that divorce was eminent. He slept in the livingroom, and let me have the master bedroom. I was in counseling twice a week. I just could not continue to live with my own behavior. I hated myself for my life style, and saw my actions as self destructive. The only relationships I knew over 16 years were the fantasies called “affairs.” Which we all know, or should know, is not a real relationship. With being 38, coming up on 40, I knew in my heart I wanted to experience a whole relationship. To be married to a man I loved, who loved me, and who was my best friend. What I saw in mom and dad. I was jealous of my own parents and the relationship they had. I was sick of living lies, and feeling like shit.

After living this way for so many years, I wasn’t sure I even knew how to have a “real relationship.” Then I met Kevin. When we started getting serious, and when I heard him talk of openness and honesty, trust and loyalty, I decided to give it my best shot. If I wanted even a decent relationship with a boyfriend, I needed to be honest and get up front about my past. And learn how to love someone. I spilled my guts about who I really was, what I had done, and he accepted me completely. He shared his past with me, although not half as bad as mine, or so I thought, from what he shared.

As Kevin’s history is not mine, I won’t be going in to deeper detail than to say, he lived by his own rules in his personal life. Honesty and openness were not part of his life where women were concerned. Although he was a strong romantic who enjoyed the chase and the challenge, this never lasted too long before another woman would catch his eye, and off in her direction he went. If I inserted the details here, let’s just say, he left a path of broken hearts and destruction in his wake as well. One of those hearts was Troll.

In actuality, Troll was part of his life off and on for 16 years, although these details he left out. The last time that he dumped her was when he moved to Arizona, as he was having an affair with another woman many many years younger than him. In the end he had asked this other woman to marry him, caught up in the romance, and what we now define as his mid life crisis. Although this woman was described to me as a brief romance, also casual in nature.

Do you see the theme here? I spilled my guts, in all of it’s ugly details, and had believed he did the same. By the time he asked me to marry him on May 11th 2002 in a bar called Kona Grill, my enlightenment was on it’s way. As was the end of my unrealistic perceptions.